Caves: Hidden Realms - Real life Skyrim!

1.
tl;dr - Caves are pretty, but terrifying. Go exploring! Look at my caving pics!
Several years ago, I got into the hobby of caving (spelunking or whatever you wanna call it...caving is easier to say). Thought I'd share some pics with you guys of some awesome things I've seen! If you don't care about giving credit where credit is due, skip the next paragraph.
All of the pictures in this album belong to my friend, JS we'll call him on here, who I took caving and fell in love with it. He proceeded to attempt underground photography, making his own lights and flashlights, and submitted a video to the NSS (National Speleological Society) that received 2nd place for our year.
We do it because you never know what you're going to find. How many other people have seen the things you see? Stepped where you've stepped? And all of this, LOCAL! (Tennessee is how much I'll say.) In many instances, I've found myself underneath the stores where I normally shop, walking and crawling beneath the roads I drive on.
It's weird to be completely cut off from everything. If something goes wrong, you've pretty much only got whoever's close to you. No cell phones, emergency services out of reach, cut off. In a big way it's kind of like culture shock. Just that feeling is enough to drive many away from experiencing the world beneath our world.
Once you get past the feeling of being cut off, there's a few other prominent fears knocking at you. The fear of darkness (In caves, it's darkness you can feel. I don't know how else to describe it.), claustrophobia (crawling, squeezing, even in big rooms, anything could happen), fear of creepy-crawlies (spiders, cave crickets, even crawfish, regular old fish, salamandeers, bats, and in one instance, a raccoon...), and lastly, a deep dark fear of the unknown.
I used to be absolutely terrified of the outdoors. But slowly, walks in the park turned into hikes, turned into climbing, turned into, wild exploration off trails, turned into finding our first cave. Only went in about 50 feet, but it was enough to get me hooked. Now after years of doing it, I still feel a sinking in my stomach when I'm about to enter the mouth of a cave, and especially when I'menteringg a new one. I like to think that feeling keeps me safe.
Without further ado, you came here for cave pics, let's do this.

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The picture above is the entrance to this cave. Not my first cave, but the first UNREGISTERED cave I've been into. As far as I know, that's still the case. We've hereby dubbed it "The Well" as the landowner drilled a pipe into the ground that is acting as a well feeding off the water in here. He asked us to take a look.
That small black thing at the back of the passage is me.

3.
This is still "The Well."
JS likes to get creative with lighting. When all you've got is a headlamp on for actual cave navigation, you don't get NEAR that kind of visibility. Again, it's hard to describe.
We did manage to find his pipe in here, but I'm not posting a pic of that as the landowner does not want that shared. I'd say we got a good quarter mile out of this cave, but could've probably gone more.

4.
THIS is one of my favorite caves. More than a mile in, you finally find the reason you have to trudge and crawl through water. THERE'S A FREAKIN' WATERFALL! The passage continues above, but slowly gets tighter and tighter until it stops. JS signed and framed a poster size print of this pic for my den.

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One of my favorite pictures of me. It just feels epic! Same waterfall room as above.
Side note: The passage before this room is a pool with chest high water. And before that is a room that looks somewhat similar to this one, but bigger and no water. This room has unfortunately been tagged by several people (as far back as 1968 I could find). The weird thing about it is it's lined by candles in various levels. Not a fun room to stay in for any length of time.

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One of the passages leading to the waterfall. This is what about half of this cave looks like.
The last pic I'll share of this cave, but there is so much more to share about this one. Stories, fun passageways, terrifying passageways, and even a near-death experience...

7.
When people go on cave tours, (especially Mammoth Cave) this is the kind of passageway you see a LOT of. This is a completely different cave from above situated on Public Land. Passageways like this have a tendency to have a lot of branches and can be easy to get lost in.
Of all the caves I've ever been to, this is the one MOST damaged by people. Tags EVERYWHERE! The only fun part about that is some of it dates back to the 1870's. Spray paint wasn't used. Instead, you can tell that the names were charred into the stone using torches.

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If you stick with the above cave long enough, you find where people were no longer willing to push forward due to the need to get on your belly and crawl a good 50 feet or so. Doing so leads to this beautiful room.

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Same room as above. It almost looks like someone just slapped a ceiling on a desert. Ignore the tag in the top right. People suck.

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Close up of one of the features you can see in the background of the pics above. Just thinking of how long it takes for this kind of thing to form is incredible.